I Killed Scheherazade by Joumana Haddad Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman

For centuries the heroine of The Arabian Nights, Scheherazade, defined the Arab womanuntil Joumana Haddad, an Arab woman herself, had had enough. Haddad angrily challenges prevalent notions of identity and womanhood in the Middle East in this intrepid exploration. While she finds the West’s dominant portrayal of Arab women appalling, she finds the image projected by many Middle Eastern women to be infuriating as well. She discusses her intellectual development and the liberating effect of literature on her life, and in the process she transcends religious and cultural perspectives. Ultimately she argues that every woman has not only the right but the duty to ignore social, political, and sexual expectations and be true to herself. Fiery and candid, this is a provocative exploration of what it means to be an Arab woman today that will enlighten and inform a new international feminism. For Haddad, Scheherazade is dead, and the time has come for Arab women to tell their own stories.

Joumana Haddad is an award-winning poet, translator, magazine publisher, and journalist. Cultural editor for an Arab newspaper, in 2008 she launched the Arab world's first erotic cultural magazine, Jasad (Body), which made international headlines and caused her to be dubbed "the Carrie Bradshaw of Beirut." She lives in Lebanon.